Happy twelfth birthday to KAITO! This song was made for the third and final ABCD Project, which I had the honor of participating in from the beginning to the end.

I wanted to try doing something different each year, so it kind of ended up as something like a wistful song followed by a cute song followed by a melancholic song, V3 Japanese followed by V3 English followed by V1, and…conlang lyrics followed by English followed by Japanese. Other than the obvious difficulties of writing in a language that’s not my native, it’s always quite a challenge writing in Japanese because I’m not as good as writing things at the same level as what I could do in English, so I hope the lyrics for this haven’t come off as too blunt…( ´ ▽ ` ) But I hope the ideas and feelings I put in this got across, anyway.

Either way, I’d always wanted to make a song like this at some point, so I’m very happy I was able to.

The art was provided by セン (Sen), whom I was extremely honored to work with as I had been admiring their art for a really, really long time m(＿ ＿)m In addition, much thanks to riodemu for looking over the lyrics (especially on such short notice!).

Incidentally, the title of the song refers to both the concept of the divine “Muse” that poets would invoke in order to request inspiration for their work, and the literary definition of a person or concept that a creator uses, regardless of whether it actually exists or not (such as Dante’s Beatrice or Plutarch’s Laura).

In any case, once again, I’m really happy to have been able to participate in KAITO’s birthday and ABCD Project this year…personally, for me, KAITO is a really important partner for my music making, and I always love seeing the effort and love that people put into his character and making things for him.

Happy end of 2017! A lot of things happened this year, so it’s fun to look back on what’s been going on. Initially I intended to only really use this site for updates related to my creative works, but lately I’ve gotten the feeling that I’ve been being a little too stiff in regards to things like this, so I thought maybe I should start talking about things in a little more of a relaxed fashion ( ´ ▽ ` )…

This year I wrote more detailed comments on each song I posted, so I don’t think I need to talk about the details again, but in short, I put out six Vocaloid songs (five self-made, one collab), and we finally released COSMOCRYSTAL II side blue! Overall, it was a very productive year and I’m satisfied with the work I’ve done for it.

I don’t know if it was because of Miku’s tenth birthday or what, but I ended up taking a lot of time to think about things…as of spring next year, it will have been six years since I started making music.

This year in particular, I got to meet a lot of new people, I had a lot of unforgettable experiences, and I’m truly thankful to the people who have supported my work and me, as a composer and Vocaloid producer.

As for next year…although it did end up in a good proliferation of work, I admit there were times I overworked myself a bit this year, so I’d like to take it a little easier. Moreover, I’d also like to put out a full album, so I think the number of uploads next year may be somewhat lower, but I’ll be continuing Vocaloid work with the same enthusiasm as before. Among those should be next year’s ABCD Project, naturally.

Other than that, I’ll also be continuing work on COSMOCRYSTAL II side red, along with some other potential projects unrelated to either Vocaloid or ARM, so please look forward to those!

In general, I would like to try different things on top of what I usually do and experiment…for the record, I recently upgraded my setup with a lot of new software for creative works (especially VSTs), but that’s not going to amount to anything if I don’t make proper use of it, right…? ( ´ ▽ ` )

Well, as always, there’s a lot of things I want to do, and never enough time to do it, especially with other real life obligations going on. But as always, I’m going to put all my effort into doing what I can, so cheers to the new year!

Due to my schedule being hard to deal with I was cutting it very very very very very close, but I made it. Happy birthday, MEIKO!

I originally wasn’t planning to make any more songs in Japanese after “Canterbury Bells for You” due to my lack of proficiency in the language, but I received a surprisingly good response to the lyrics in that song and decided I would give it another try. Many thanks to 上級者向けP (JoukyuushamukeP) for looking over the lyrics for me.

I wanted to make a song that was very MEIKO-like. “MEIKO-like” probably means a lot of different things to different people, and even in my own perspective there’s a lot of things I associate with her, but I put a lot of what I personally perceive as embodying her. As for what that is…well, I’ll let the song speak for itself.

In order to portray a MEIKO with a very strong and firm image, I asked drooliedoan to illustrate the video for me. Thank you very much.

In somewhat tangentially related discussion, I recently switched to Cubase as my main DAW. I’m still getting used to it, but I think my workflow and the resulting quality of my music should hopefully improve from here on out. This is also my first time using MEIKO’s V1 as a main vocal, so there were a lot of first times here.

Since I highly doubt I’ll be able to finish another one between now and the end of December, this will probably be the last Vocaloid song I put out for 2017. See you again on KAITO’s birthday in February!

I’m not sure if I’d intended for it to go this way from the beginning, but it seems that I’ve written a lot of songs about the concept of “regret” lately. The feeling of having things you want to do, but not being able to do it; the feeling of wishing you’d done something different.

This is a story of understanding that line of thinking, and then putting an end to it.

Also, for the first time in a long while, I decided to release the unaltered VSQx/MIDI data. Lately I’ve been rather embarrassed about exposing everything like this, especially when it comes to English, but I thought about it and decided it’s okay as long as it’s helpful. Someone out there is probably going to look at it and think “what the hell is she doing?!”, but…_(:3」∠)_

Incidentally, this is also the first proper duet I’ve made with Vocaloid. MEIKO goes all the way up to G♯5, so I’m very proud of her.

The art is by Yen-Mi, whom I’d wanted to work with for a long time now. Thank you so much!

At this point it’s not a situation that I really want to address bluntly, but I do think it’d be better to be clear about my position on the matter, since I’d rather have that than give off the impression that I’ve completely abandoned her and am only keeping the links up out of obligation. Hana‘s last update was in February 2013; there’s still quite a few visible holes in her listed voicebanks on her page, and moreover the demands of the UTAU community have evolved quite considerably since then.

Unfortunately, although I would like to keep her up to standard, the amount of free time I have and my ability to continue working on her has gotten very limited. My current living and working conditions make a very poor environment for clean recordings and my day-to-day schedule tends to be very unpredictable, meaning that recording the samples in a clean and consistent manner in such a way that’s suitable for UTAU is rather difficult at the moment. For Hana’s update in 2013 I worked to keep her at a certain standard of quality, which I can’t guarantee I can consistently meet in this state.

Beyond recording ability, there’s also the simple issue of free time; I actually do have a small amount of unreleased recorded material, but the amount of time it takes for sample post-processing and oto.ini configuration is a lot more than I currently have while juggling original music-related projects and the demands of my daily life. Again, this was something I was very fixated on refining as much as I could for her 2013 update, and although it’s theoretically possible to quickly patch this up and release it, it would be of unacceptable quality compared to the prior releases.

Thus, I can only say that it’s unlikely I’ll be able to give her any updates in the near future. However, my situation is always changing and it’s possible something might happen – it’s just that I’m simply unable to make any guarantees. Until then, even if it’s a bit outdated I believe Hana’s 2013 update has still left her in a respectable state, and I intend to continue providing technical support and distributing her for as long as I’m able to.

Thank you to those who have given their support to Hana up until now, and to those who are supporting me in all current and future endeavors!

This was actually a song that I’d been working on for around two years, but after fixating on it too much I eventually decided to redo the entire thing from scratch, so this was the result. The theme is “repeatedly reflecting on things that aren’t here anymore”.

The VY2 in the picture is based off of my own concept (pardon the clumsy scribble)

and the design (named “Moon’s Scion”) used in the video was by ctrlkun.

The design is in the same vein as Story Teller and Lore Reader, and represents “the strength that supports the illuminating light”. As you can see, Lore Reader herself is in the picture as well. There was actually a more explicit story and setting in the original drafts for the song, but I eventually decided to leave it more ambiguous, so please feel free to decide for yourself what connection there might be to Starlight Mist or the other relevant songs, or if you believe there’s even a connection at all.

The album will be sold at this year’s Spring (April 30, 2017) M3 doujinshi event at the Tokyo Ryutsu Center, booth ク-33z. You can also place a preorder for mail delivery at BOOTH (for Japanese residents) or Isukado (for overseas customers).

This is COSMOCRYSTAL II‘s “Side Blue”; I’ll also be participating in “Side Red”, which is planned for release later this year.

Please take a look at the album if you’re interested, and look forward to the rest!

The theme of this song is “to you, whom I received everything from and gave nothing to”.

For certain reasons, I wrote the lyrics in Japanese for the first time in a long while. The quality of the lyrics isn’t anything I’d consider at the level of what I could do in English, but I hope the feelings in the lyrics get across.

Because this was my first time using KAITO’s V1, I’d like to develop my ability to tune/mix/master him further in the future.

The illustration was done by hyoujisama (Winter), while Winter, Aaron, Geiky, and ももかれ (Momokare) corrected any outstanding errors they found in the lyrics. Thank you to all of you.